The present invention relates generally to the detection of communication failures and more particularly to bidirectional forwarding detection for detecting network communication failures over network virtualization using generic routing encapsulation tunnels.
Network virtualization using generic routing encapsulation (NVGRE) is a network virtualization technology adapted to ameliorate scalability problems associated with large cloud computing deployments. NVGRE uses an encapsulation technique similar to that used by virtual local area networks (VLANs) to encapsulate media access control (MAC) based layer 2 Ethernet frames within layer 3 packets. In accordance with an NVGRE tunneling mechanism, a first device, referred to as an originating virtual tunnel end point, encapsulates a data packet in accordance with NVGRE protocols, and transmits the encapsulated data packet to a second device, referred to as the terminating virtual tunnel end point. The terminating virtual tunnel end point decapsulates the data packet and forwards the decapsulated data packet to an intended destination device.
An increasingly important feature of network management is the rapid detection of communication failures between adjacent systems in order to more quickly establish alternative paths. Bidirectional forwarding detection (BFD) is a common method used in networking equipment for rapid fault detection. However, there is currently no mechanism for supporting BFD to detect failures between end points in NVGRE tunneling.